


You Try To Rise Out Of The Chaos

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 05:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>As a rule, Sherlock does not deal with the supernatural.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Try To Rise Out Of The Chaos

**Author's Note:**

> Borrows an element or two from _Supernatural_ , but not intended as a crossover.
> 
> _You try to rise out of the chaos..._

As a rule, Sherlock does not deal with the supernatural.

This does not mean he is unaware of it – of any of them. Not at all. You cannot pride yourself on noting every single little detail in the world, the simple facts of reality most people ignore ( _how?_ ), and remain oblivious to the fact that things are very much more complicated than you would rather have them. 

(Sometimes he would prefer it simpler. Just him and him alone.)

(God, that would be dull.)

Corpses drained of blood or mauled by oversized claws; outbursts of slaughtered wildlife and graffiti in languages Sherlock doesn’t pretend to speak; ‘witnesses’ with conveniently specific amnesia: these things do not pass by for long, and it doesn’t take long for them to build a rather disheartening picture.

It’s messy: detritus building in the spaces between, where there doesn’t _need_ to be anything. The world doesn’t need ethereal beings to spirit children away into the woods or the city lights, because there are already human beings more than capable of doing so; it doesn’t need dark deals at the crossroads because it isn’t all that hard to find a man lurking in an alleyway who’ll sell you happiness at a price. That’s precisely why these things can apparently pass by undetected: predators camouflaged as prey, or perhaps the reverse entirely.

Sherlock realised the truth while he was still young – or rather, he never stopped knowing it, even as his classmates slowly ‘grew out’ of a belief in beings who could tear them apart for amusement. This in itself has always baffled him – why ignore a viable threat, why turn a deaf ear to the growls at your door – albeit less so now than then, having gained a little more appreciation for the common human's capacity for self-delusion. Besides which, his brother – back in the days before he grew old and boring and obsessed with matters of no importance – took him aside early on to explain how people would react to a small boy, or even a man, speaking of vampires or werewolves or ghosts or the Fae at all, let alone in such a matter-of-fact manner.

With the passage of time, and continued observation, Sherlock decided to simply operate on the principle outlined to him by his uncle: once you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain.

For this reason he does not wear amulets, or inscribe protective runes, or partake in anything so much as tangentially related to the supernatural. He avoids cases soaked in their stench – or, if he must, if there is a human involved somewhere or just one he thinks might benefit from the experience, he finds evidence with which he can damn the culprits without needing to resort to ‘magic’.

If he keeps salt in the house, that is only because unlike him, John cooks. Any iron lies within his experiments, or the bent and re-straightened poker by the fireplace.

And he absolutely does not make deals.

(Deals are handing over a piece of yourself in exchange for a poisoned chalice. Sherlock cannot imagine wanting anything enough to give himself away.)

The exact state of John's own belief intrigues Sherlock. The man appears practical to the point of stubbornness and projects perfectly the appearance of boring normality, and yet he already sees – to some extent – the world as Sherlock does (London isn’t a crime scene to him, yet). Moreover, sometimes there is the odd glimmer, when confronted by something which forces a mystical explanation, or catching Sherlock dodging a case, or even sitting in their flat when he imagines Sherlock isn't looking. 

(As if Sherlock could ever be unaware of John Watson.) 

Sometimes Sherlock suspects that John might have encountered something out there in the desert. Not something concrete and irrefutable, the way Sherlock likes his facts. But _something_ , nonetheless. 

He can’t explain why he suspects this, but then, he technically can’t do so with so many of his inklings regarding John Watson, based as they are on such circumstantial evidence that under normal circumstances he’d be appalled with himself. 

However, what he does know from his travels is that in some parts of the world the ‘Others’ (as Mycroft so diplomatically likes to call them, meddler that he is in Parliament and Seelie and Unseelie Courts alike, practically fae himself in his own way) live far closer to the surface. Something in the air perhaps, or the people, but then, not all that is strange seeks to hide itself away. 

Certainly he was prepared for something unnatural out in those moors. It’s possible, he admits whilst alone in the fog of tedium, that he had pursued the more familiar laws of the world with more rigour than perhaps necessary in that case. Otherwise, he couldn’t have explained it to John, and anything, _anything_ to avoid the taint of that other world.

(He accepted long ago that he will spend his entire life trying to make sense out of this chaos of a reality, be it through science or music or illegal assistants.)

He might be aware – no escaping that – yet the fact remains that this is a world Sherlock has always preferred to ignore, passively or actively, he doesn’t care which. Supernatural beings form as much of an inconvenience as natural ones, and are far more apt at complicating his life should he express the slightest bit of interest. Not that he ever should – their ‘mysteries’ involve too many variables, too little by way of clues for ‘mortals’ such as himself. ‘Magic’ is messy and unquantifiable and he wants little to do with it.

(Moriarty already offered the experience of somebody curling his world between their fingers, twisting reality, invading and poisoning his life, and Sherlock has no desire to repeat the experience with any other beings passing through.) 

If he feels fear with regard to any of it, then it might lie in those of whom he hears only whispers, amongst his Homeless Network at times, or on his rare ventures into the woods, when he refuses not to listen. 

Demons are another sort of entity altogether. Even setting aside the dull theological issues, there seems something particularly thorny in this particular case. More than anything else, there is their refusal to coexist with the rest. Demons consider themselves apart; intervene on their own whims. More than the Others, whom Sherlock can catalogue and ignore, demons seem to merit active avoidance.

These are rules by which Sherlock has lived his logical life. They have served him well.

And yet, like the rest of his life, he finds them breaking apart in the face of the force that is John Watson and whatever he has done to Sherlock's life.

Because when he sees John's familiar brown eyes swirl into emotionless black, and hears his voice drip with honeyed evil, the decision to retaliate takes no time at all.

Avoidance isn’t the same as ignorance.

And, if necessary, Sherlock already knows where to make a deal.

**Author's Note:**

> _...but it always drags you back down._


End file.
